The American Negociant: Brian Retherford, Claudine Wines

XChateau is a podcast about all things wine, from vine to your glass. We tackle the business of wine and keep you up to date with new and exciting developments in the wine industry.

In this episode, Robert Vernick and Peter Yeung interview Brian Retherford, founder of Claudine Wines, a modern, American micro-negociant.  We discuss the wine market inefficiencies that make a negociant model possible, how the wines of Claudine differ from the wineries’ wines, and where the best deals will be going forward. 

Other topics covered in this episode include:

• Brain’s background - 15 years in the US Army, now a cybersecurity consultant
• Started by doing a Crushpad project - micro winemaking project that ended up being too expensive with insufficient quality
• Types of negociant models
  • Buying fruit
  • Buying bulk wine
  • Buying finished wine in a barrel - Claudine’s main focus
  • Buying bottled wine
• Market inefficiencies in the wine industry
  • Takes 3-4 years from harvest decision to selling wine, which creates supply/demand mismatches
  • Other opportunities: tasting room that burnt down in the fires, the winery decided not to release a wine it made to focus on the core region, yield variations year to year creating more wine
• What can Claudine put on the wine label
  • Try to be as specific as possible - using the AVA, but can’t discuss producer, winemaker, or vineyards usually
  • Often shares a copy of language with winery before releasing
• Sustainability of the business
  • Keep small scale (3-5 barrel projects) and do more projects vs bigger projects
  • Focus on higher-value - if a similar wine could be bought at Costco, won’t do the project
  • Curating great product and building customer trust over time
• Differences between Claudine and the winery’s wine
  • Might be the same - “the last 100 cases off the line” or already bottled wine
  • Some wine that didn’t make it into the final blend and have extra barrels
• The wine bulk market
  • Bifurcated between top juice and commodity wines
  • The upper end is more competitive
• Winery options other than negociants to sell excess wine
  • Don’t produce (often not done b/c the marginal cost to produce is small)
  • Lower price (not a popular option in the US)
  • Sell to flash sale sites (e.g. - Last Bottle, WTSO)
  • Wine gets “poured out” or destroyed
• Claudine customer demographics
  • CA - had wine events pre-COVID
  • NY, Boston, Kansas City - where Brian used to live
  • Brian knows about 1 in 10 customers now
  • Skews older in the age group
• Upcoming deals - likely good opportunities by focusing on deepening relationship in Napa

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